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Domain explosion

What do you all think about this expansion? Might kill off a small percentage of those .com harvesters.

PARIS (AFP) — Web regulators Thursday voted to allow the creation of thousands of new domain names, from .paris to .Pepsi, in one of the biggest shake-ups in Internet history, a French web official said.

The overhaul is expected to radically change the way users navigate the Internet and has major implications for businesses and consumers worldwide.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board approved the change at its annual general meeting in Paris, according to Loic Damilaville, deputy head of the French domain name body, the AFNIC.

"We think this is a great opportunity for the sector, we are very enthusiastic," the chief executive of ICANN, Paul Twomey, told AFP before the vote.

Currently all web addresses fall under one of some 250 top-level domain names: .country or .territory domains, and generic ones such as .com, .net and .org, .gov, and .edu.

Under the new system, the web's 1.3 billion users would be able from 2009 to buy an unlimited number of generic addresses based on common words, brands or company names, cities or proper names.

The popular online trading site eBay is one of the many companies that wants to have its own domain name.

Broad product groups such as .bank or .car are also likely contenders, while the pornography industry is angling for the creation of a .xxx domain for adult sites.

Cities could benefit too from this liberalisation, with the German capital hoping for .berlin or New York for .nyc.

Twomey said the details would be worked out over the next three or four months, with the change expected to take effect in the second quarter of 2009.

"That said, there are currently more than 160 million domain names and I do not expect to see the same number of new extensions created in 2009," he said.

The regulator also voted to allow domain names to be lodged in languages such as Arabic or Mandarin Chinese, according to Damilaville.

Some participants at the ICANN meet had voiced concerns about "cybersquatting" -- the risk that brand names, for example, could be usurped on the web.

To avoid chaos, Damilaville said the ICANN also adopted a motion designed to "limit the abusive registration of new domain names."

In addition, ICANN is looking at ways of blocking certain domain names based on security or moral grounds, he said.

Some cities or regions have been bending the rules already to get the domain they want. The city of Los Angeles has for example signed a deal with the southeast Asian state Laos to use its .la domain.

With the stock of available web addresses under the current IPv4 protocol set to run out by 2011, ICANN has been under pressure to find a solution for burgeoning demand.

In theory, an infinite number of new domain names could be born, which would prove a boon for ICANN because it would receive payment for each one.

But in reality advanced technical skills and deep pockets would be needed to set up a new name.

Industry experts expect the cost -- which has yet to be fixed -- could reach into the tens of thousands of dollars.

A non-profit organisation based in southern California, ICANN oversees the assignment of domain names and Internet protocol addresses that help computers communicate.

More than 1,500 delegates from 70 countries gathered in Paris for ICANN's meeting.

I really don't like it either. I mean I got the gov ones and countries and then the top 3 .com, .org, and .net. I really don't think we need anymore. They are still going to have the .com and such it will just all redirect to the same place.

I can kind of see the .xxx for adult sites though as that can be fully blocked under the settings for children which would be good.

"Let us declare nature to be legitimate. All plants should be declared legal, and all animals for that matter. The notion of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous."- T. McKenna

cool. But it would probably be too expensive for people to buy. That would probably reduce the number of hopefuls buying domains and selling them later for lots of money. Also, how do they handle the situation where I buy .kit and someone buys flash.kit. Do I get to decide whether they can buy it, and does ICANN get the money?

I've been wishing they'd create .xxx for the sole purpose of blocking it out. Give parents some help people.

As far as the rest, sounds just like major tv networks. If only the big guys have em it's cool but if anyone can make up their own url imagine the validation hell it will cause for devs.

I still have trouble remembering where the dots go in del.icio.us.
And how is google going to rank something that isn't a .com, .net etc. There's already a bonus to having keywords in your url so will this start devaluing sites that have payed their dues to be on page 1? We'll just have to start giving everyone a number (of the beast?).

I can understand the annoyance of having a lot more extensions. But, in my view, there is something lame about people getting rich by harvesting domains and other domain scams. It just doesn't seem to serve any positive function for people or our economy. Just inflates prices on something that is arbitrarily set up to be a needlessly scarce commodity. It seems parasitic to me. So, why not just blow that out of the water, allow more choice for consumers to decide what is memorable and diminish the ability to effectively monopolize URL's.

Because those people have made so much money that they will just beat everyone too it and harvest all the new ones. But did I read it correctly in that it said something about a restriction on mass domain registering of these new ones?

"Let us declare nature to be legitimate. All plants should be declared legal, and all animals for that matter. The notion of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous."- T. McKenna

There is some allusion to that. But, it doesn't look like they specified how it would work. Seems like it wouldn't be too difficult to work around if someone really wanted to.

They might very well be able to harvest all the new ones. I'm not sure. Think about how many variations are added with each new extension. That's a lot to harvest. But, one thing is for certain, they will try.

There's no "Finally!" here as in, "Finally, we can do x on the internet." It's not like vhs compared to beta. A whole bunch of the same in a different way has never amounted to much.

Thats actually quite a good measure of improvement. But I'm not sure you are right. I'm not terribly excited about being able to get a .something domain. I wouldn't even consider .name or .mobile (how com the tld that you have to type in on a 12 key keyboard is the longest? Why couldn't it be .wap, .map, .gam or some other combination of characters that end up on different keys on the mobile phone keypad?). I'm almost accepting .net domains, but .com is still the authority tld. If you want to end up on the right domain, enter the name and then .com. Nobody hosts their huge corporate website on a .org domain alone. Even del.icio.us has delicious.com. So all the other (current) tld are actually pretty useless. It's not like someone has a really popular site at somename.com and someone else has a really popular site at somename.net.

But with new tld you could actually create more variety. .xxx is already mentioned, and you could create other tld for different fields of interest. .torrent, .gaming, .flashkitcowanddonut. But .pepsi or .msft would be pointless. All the domains under that tld would be like subdomains under today's domains. What difference is there from http://board.flashkit.com and http://www.board.flashkit? The only useful feature I can see from corporations buying tld is if you had something like .ms for Microsoft development sites. Instead of Microsoft owning all the .ms domains, people could register a .ms domain if the site was about Microsoft or Microsoft products. Another problem could be the phishing possibilities from buying .cmo and then buying google.cmo.

Actually I don't think we should have tld. 90% of the sites I visit have .com as its tld, so whats the point? The only use .com has today is indicating that it is a website. But it definitely does not indicate that you are at a company site. I think it would be much better if you could just enter google in the address bar and it would take you to google. I know it does now, but that is because it does a google search for whatever you enter.

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